mercredi 30 septembre 2015

Source Quartz India by Phalguni Desai
At a talk recently organised at a gallery exhibiting the works of Raghubir Singh, a gentleman remembered the time spent with the master photographer in the early 1980s while helping him navigate Bombay. He recounted Singh asking to be taken to a particular spot early in the morning. But once there, Singh didn’t take a single picture. Instead, he walked around and eventually asked to be taken back there in the evening. The storyteller, then a green photographer, could not understand Singh’s requests. He questioned him repeatedly until Singh explained that he was looking for that perfect light, the colours that could alchemise the image he was looking for.
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Source Baron's by Richard C. Morais
When the recession hit, sales of India’s top 100 modern and contemporary artists fell by three-quarters. The Chinese market, in contrast, continued to explode. Kiran Nadar, considered perhaps India’s foremost collector of modern and contemporary art, is in the process of building a home for the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in Delhi, to house her 3,200-piece collection. “In the 1990s,” Nadar says, “a lot of Indians came into the market thinking, ‘This bubble will never burst. It’s a good way to make money.’ Unfortunately, they didn’t have the love of art to sustain them. They got their fingers burned and withdrew from the market. And so, six years after the crash, prices still remain relatively depressed. Today, powerful and possibly seminal works by talented contemporary Indian artists can be had for just $1,000 to $20,000 apiece. A subjective call? Determining the true value of an object is only possible by comparing it to similar items.
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Source The Wire by Piyush Wadhera
Prabuddha turned a regressive situation into an opportunity to reflect on his own role as an artist. His later inquiries took the form of spiritual quests, first in his melancholic landscapes for Ladakh (2000), and then in the detailed portraits of the Goan Catholic community in Edge of Faith (2007). His approach to his subjects was full of grace, and in his lifetime, Prabuddha himself seemed like a certain embodiment of this word. The empathy that he shared with his subjects was taken to a new level with his most ambitious – though unfinished – project, The Longing, an intimate yet abstract journal of his life. Prabudha died in 2012, but the retrospective of his work at the NGMA testifies to a quiet victory against ideas about uniform, conservative Indian culture. The NGMA should be applauded for it, and for seeing through the twin blinds of commerce and conservatism, to the coded message of encouragement that Prodosh gave to his sons: Whatever you do, never forget that an artist is exactly what you are.
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Source E-flux
Contemporary art and folk cultures. Indeed, the notion of folk culture encompasses countless ambiguities, even mystifications, and has never ceased to undergo various extensions and repositioning produced by the various disciplines that have touched it (literature, art history, ethnography, history, etc.) since the eighteenth century. Thus, this project aims at approaching folk cultures by using the sociological distinction between the traditions and art forms of the working classes (low culture) by opposition to those of the cultivated elite (high culture). In the steps of Stuart Hall, the exhibition approaches this articulation like a “constant fight” between low and high culture where artists of all eras have played a crucial role through quotations, formal, methodological or conceptual borrowings or even appropriations.
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Publié par
Herve Perdriolle

jeudi 24 septembre 2015

Source Live Law by Manu Sebastian
“It is the duty of all people who love our country to see that no harm is done to the Scheduled Tribes and that they are given all help to bring them up in economic and social status, since they have been victimized for thousands of years by terrible oppression and atrocities. The mentality of our country towards the tribal’s must change, and they must be given respect they deserve as the original inhabitants of India” – Supreme Court of India, in Kailas vs State of Maharashtra (2011). Whether a movie which openly brands ‘adivasis’ and forest dwellers as ‘devils’ ‘demons’ and ‘uncivilized’, and has the plot of a demigod protagonist using his divine force and superhuman powers to ‘civilise’ the tribes by using force, is offensive to the sentiments of tribal communities; and if yes, whether such offence warrants the ban of the screening of the movie :- these were the broad issues which had arisen before the Hon’ble High Court of Delhi, in Prem Mardi vs. Union of India.
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Source The New Indian Express
“The Biennale is a vast canvas where art transcends boundaries with the participation of international artists. It is now a world-renowned contemporary art festival, thanks to the organisers. Promoting such an event will help to boost Kerala’s cultural tourism. The public and the industrial world have a collective responsibility to support the event,” he noted.
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Publié par
Herve Perdriolle

dimanche 20 septembre 2015

Source Trib Live by Alice T. Carter
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust will spotlight the art and culture of India during a seven-week festival planned for this fall. From Sept. 25 to Nov. 9, the Cultural Trust will present a multidisciplinary program that will provide a glimpse into the classical and contemporary arts of India. So far, 15 dance, theater, music and visual arts events have been scheduled. More may be announced as plans continue to evolve. The events include work that has been created in and influenced by the richness of India's culture, according to organizer Paul Organisak, outgoing vice president of programming for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. Not all of the artists are from India.
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Source Mumbai Mirror by Reema Gehi
Getting nostalgic, Weihe recalls, "I was the auctioneer that day. He (Tyeb) was sitting on the isle. We reached one million dollars. Everyone was clapping and we weren't even done yet. He was speechless when the auction was over. He was an extraordinarily sensitive and wonderful human being." Having completed his PhD in art history from the University of Zurich, Weihe's interest in art began through his grandfather's collection. "He was in the German Navy and once brought back some art from Asia. That inspired me. I was always fascinated by cross-cultural, interrelation connections. And how that has grown historically. I was looking at Chinese and Japanese art and I found my way to India and Indian art," he says. "I want to do the best for Indian culture. My goal is to build connoisseurship in modern and contemporary art and ultimately antiquities."
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Source Newsweek by John Elliot
A new record price for an Indian painting was set on September 17 at a Christie’s auction in New York when India’s most prolific collector, Kiran Nadar, bid $3.5 million ($4.01 million including buyer’s premium) for Birth, a monumental 8 feet by 4 feet oil on board by F.N. Souza, one of the country’s most famous artists, who died in 2002. The previous record price of $2.59 million for a Souza work was set just last week at a Saffronart auction in Delhi, when his 5 feet by 4 feet Man and Woman Laughing went to the Delhi Art Gallery (DAG) for a hammer price of Rs14.6 crore – Rs16.84 crore ($2.59 million) including the premium.
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Publié par
Herve Perdriolle

mercredi 16 septembre 2015

Source Mydigitalfc by Amita Sharma Sep
Awarded Padma Shri in 1984, Ganga Devi placed an ancient folk art on a contemporary, international horizon, moving beyond the limited vocabulary of symbols and images, to investigate the unlimited potential of line drawing and incorporating the ‘brave new world’ in paintings as America series, Moscow Ho­tel, Festival of American Folk Life, and Ride in a Roller Coaster. She demonstrated the power of an Indian village artist to mythologise contemporary urban symbols. Is erasing Ganga Devi’s painting the tribute to Bharat? Is there an equality in the government’s treatment of an artist and a craftsperson?
Ironic, that a museum sho­uld be so history-less at a time when the government asserts its pride in India’s ancient past and more, seeks a mandate in Madhubani the land of ‘forest of honey’. The Taliban and the ISI demolish their art deliberately as ideological statements. The wh­ite wall that replaces Ganga Devi’s Mithila art — whose ideology is that?
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Source The Diplomat by Neeta Lal
Yet despite the punitive nature of law, Indian antiquities worth billions continue to be smuggled out of the country or hoarded in private collections sans documentation. Among the most audacious of Indian smugglers has been Subhash Kapoor, currently on trial in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. In 2011, Kapoor, owner of the “Art of the Past” gallery in Manhattan, was nabbed in Germany and subsequently extradited to India. Among other activities, he is alleged to have sold the 900­-year-­old bronze Nataraja for $5 million to the National Gallery of Australia in 2008 and a 1,100 ­year-­old stone sculpture of Shiva to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2004. American authorities – who confiscated 2,622 items worth $107.6 million from Kapoor’s storerooms in Manhattan and Queens – have described him as the most ambitious antiquities smuggler in American history.
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Publié par
Herve Perdriolle

mardi 15 septembre 2015

Source Blouin Art Info by Archana Khare-Ghose
“There are so many art disciplines in the subcontinent, and so integral to the artistic culture of the region,” she elaborates. Though she doesn’t give away much, she does ask to be prepared for “surprises in January during the next edition of the fair.” The inclusion of crafts and tribal art is going to be a seminal part of the fair’s approach to bring other disciplines under its wings, shares Masud. “We are hoping to include crafts and tribal art as that’s what 80% of the country and it is important to reflect that in the art fair,” she says. The focus is going to be region-wise, country wide. “Even as we want to include everyone, our focus will remain on quality.”
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Source India New England
Showcasing the works of international contemporary artists documenting and drawing inspiration from India, Seeing the Elephant and Looking In/Looking Out: Contemporary Indian Photography from the Gaur Collection are two complementary exhibitions offering myriad viewpoints and a multi-faceted lens through which to examine and understand one of the world's oldest, most diverse civilizations. The College is also presenting the world premiere of Looking In/Looking Out: Contemporary Indian Photography from the Gaur Collection, highlighting selected works from the collection of Umesh and Sunanda Gaur, one of the largest repositories of contemporary Indian art in the country.
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Source The Wire by Sangeeta Barroah Pisharoty
In an act of bureaucratic vandalism that is being condemned by art lovers in the Capital, the Crafts Museum has destroyed an iconic representation of a bridal nuptial chamber from Mithila known as a kohbar ghar that was specially painted for it by an acclaimed artist from Bihar, Ganga Devi (1928-1991). Breaking the news of the chamber’s demolition, Jyotindra Jain, a former director of the museum, said the walls of the room had been “painted from top to bottom by Ganga Devi over a period of 3 to 4 months” despite suffering from cancer. As for the idea that the museum can simple “get another made”, Jain says the work is irreplaceable. Ganga Devi was a true legend as an artist and was nationally recognised with a President’s Award, a Padma Shree. Ganga Devi’s was the “only example of a complete iconographic rendering of Mithila’s kohbar ghar and that too, painted in her extraordinary personal idiom.” The painted chamber was “an extraordinary and unique monument in the history of contemporary folk and tribal arts of India.”
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Source The Wire by Deborah Baker
In February 1990 I married my husband before a crowd of strangers on the rooftop of his parents house in Calcutta. That first year I worked on a book in the back room of a borrowed apartment in Ballygunge while he worked on his book a few kilometers away in his childhood bedroom in Jodhpur Park. Every month or so we would go to the home of a popular and prolific Bengali writer named Tarapada Ray. He lived with his wife on the second floor of a big house near the Astor Hotel closer to the city center.
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Source Times of India by Neelma Raaj
The Charles Correa-designed Crafts Museum is under the textile ministry. Despite several attempts, Navraj Goyal, additional development commissioner, handicrafts, could not be reached. A museum official who did not want to be named said the demolition was part of a modernization plan conceived under the previous director. Curator Yashodhara Dalmia said the murals were one of her favourite art works and she had watched Ganga Devi create the wonderful narrative in the Mithila style. "No plan to revamp a museum should include wiping out such an important part of our history and heritage." The country's cultural fraternity reacted with similar expressions of horror on social media, with artists Gigi Scaria and Praneet Soi calling it a shame and a crime while noted collector Lekha Poddar said she was saddened.
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Source The Indian Express by Vandana Kalra
Dressed in a collared shirt and trousers — unlike the kurta that he now adorns — KG Subramanyan is seated in the midst of paper and paints. He seems indifferent to the clutter. The pieces of paper cuttings are possibly primal material that transformed into celebrated artwork. “He was an excellent teacher. This photograph was taken at his Baroda studio, visited by several of his students,” says artist Jyoti Bhatt. The photograph, taken in the late 50s or 60s, is cherished by Bhatt for being his portrait of the revered teacher at MS University in Baroda.
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Source Blouin Art Info by Ameta Bal
Speaking of her new appointment, Mathew says, “The art scene in India has never been more vibrant. There are new galleries, museums and initiatives emerging all the time that are engaging more people than ever before. The crowds at our events earlier this year showed that there is a real hunger for the sort of international outlook that Sotheby’s offers, so we are thrilled to be expanding our operations here to become a bigger part of this mix. In this new role I will use my experience both at Sotheby’s and in my previous career on Wall Street to increase the visibility of the Sotheby’s brand, drive more business with our existing clients and engage with a new audience of private and corporate collectors.”
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Source The Economic Times
Modern Indian painter F N Souza's oil-on-masonite artwork titled "Man and Woman Laughing" sold for approximately Rs 16.84 crore ($ 2.5 million) topping the 15th anniversary auction here by Saffronart. The sale held here late last evening featured 75 lots of some of the most sought after names in modern and contemporary Indian art and posted total sales at approximately Rs 82 crore ($ 12.7 million) 97 per cent lots sold. Four lots including that of Souza's achieved world record. Other lots that achieved world record prizes were a fibreglass sculpture by Ravinder Reddy titled "Devi" that sold for approximately Rs 2.7 crore ($ 415,385).
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Source The Indian Express by Pallavi ChattopadhyayWhat are your plans for Saffronart? We want to expand on all fronts online and describe other categories — tribal art, popular art and Bollywood, among others. The field that we are particularly looking at is the antiquities field, particularly the Indian miniature paintings, stone sculptures and bronze sculptures that I would really like to develop within India. We want to explain their context for new collectors to come in and understand it in an efficient way. India has 5,000 years of history and culture behind it and it is time for India to embrace it.
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Source Business Standard
According to 2011 Census, 104.28 million tribes cover about 15 per cent area of our country with its 8.61 per cent population. In India, more than 700 tribes are registered and residing in the 30 states and union territories,including Andaman and Nicobar and Lakshadeep islands. Most number of tribes, 62, are in Orissa while Sikkim has the lowest with only four, Uttarakhand has five. They are rich in cultural heritage and skilled in art and craft. They need special attention to develop their overall livelihood, Joshi said.
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Source The Wire by Gauri Gill
To begin at the beginning, why does art even matter? What made me, at 15, get into a face-off with the art teacher at my school, to insist that I would hold my own exhibition outside the girls dormitory in response to the school’s more formal one, to convince my friends to help me cut and carry the six-foot-tall sheet of ply up from the quarter masters; what made it so evident to me that the complex and unfathomable interiority of the seated thinking man I had made (some kind of mash-up of Rodin and Giacometti) would be best represented with a zero for a head – well, OK, the tangled scrawl of a few zeroes, egg-shaped zeroes to be precise? The art teacher immediately banned this inchoate experimentation; in my own view, he was needlessly bent upon realism.
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Publié par
Herve Perdriolle

mardi 8 septembre 2015

Source Art Net News by Henri Neuendorf
Following a spray-paint attack in June, Anish Kapoor's sculptural installation Dirty Corner (2011) at Versailles was vandalized a second time over the weekend. But instead of a splattering of paint, vandals sprayed anti-semitic slogans on the sculpture this time, prompting condemnation from French politicians. AFP reported that the palace's management discovered phrases such as “SS blood sacrifice," and “Christ is King in Versailles," written in French on the sculpture and the surrounding rocks on Sunday morning.
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vendredi 4 septembre 2015

Source Indian Express by Pooja Pillai
The first office will be set up in Mumbai, where Mathew says they already have an infrastructure which can be expanded to take on the responsibilities of a full-fledged operation. She says,“We also see Mumbai as the cultural centrepoint of the country, being well-located and accessible from all parts of the country.” Sotheby’s focus, at least in the beginning, will be on organising educational events that will help keep the market well-informed on the current trends and concerns of the global collectibles market.
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Source Livemint by Dhamini Ratnam
We feel that the timing is perfect because we have observed a very vibrant art scene here—the museums, galleries, foundations and an expanding client base. We see Indian buyers, both residents in India and outside India, engaging Sotheby’s for the first time. We’ve seen a 10% growth in the number of our Indian clients last year, so the stars are aligned. The Indian client base are primarily buyers, not sellers. Investment is one of the factors that the collector would look at when stepping into the market. But our business is driven by passion.
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Source Colossal by Christopher Jobson
Across India an entire category of architecture is slowly crumbling into obscurity, and you’ve probably never even heard it. Such was the case 30 years ago when Chicago journalist Victoria Lautman made her first trip to the country and discovered the impressive structures called stepwells. Like gates to the underworld, the massive subterranean temples were designed as a primary way to access the water table in regions where the climate vacillates between swelteringly dry during most months, with a few weeks of torrential monsoons in the spring.
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Publié par
Herve Perdriolle

jeudi 3 septembre 2015

Source IBN Live by Koral Dasgupta
One of the oldest and yet the most modern treatment towards women can be traced in the paintings and sculptures of the Indus Valley Civilisation, where dancing women have been depicted in stone, terracotta and gold figurines. While nudity in art happens to be a huge political and social taboo among many contemporary critics and ideologies, a dancing girl cast in bronze was sculpted way back at Mohenjodaro! She has large eyes, flat nose, full lips; she is adorned with necklaces hanging till her breast, her arms covered with bangles made of bone or ivory. She seems extremely well maintained and stands in grace for the viewer.
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Publié par
Herve Perdriolle

mercredi 2 septembre 2015

Source Wall Street International
Showcasing work by Photographer Deidi Von Schaewen, this exhibition explores the traditional painted houses of the Adevasi villages in Hazaribagh, in the Indian state of Jharkhand and Khovar (comb-cut marriage art) and Sohrai (painted harvest art) paintings re-produced by the Tribal Women Artists Cooperative (TWAC). The TWAC was formed in l993 from a project for creating tribal art funded by the Australian High Commission, New Delhi. This cooperative was founded and is directed by Bulu Imam, the environmentalist, who is also the Regional Convener of the Hazaribagh Chapter of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH). Fifty tribal women currently benefit from this unique self-support project.
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Source AMA
Robin Woodhead, head of Sotheby’s International, has announced appointments in the Indian business branch, as well as the opening of a new office in Mumbai, India on 1 September. The move to Mumbai will provide better service to wealthy clients within the country, which will “[…] increase the scale and scope of its activities in the country and support a full calendar of events, lectures, exhibitions, and charity sales.” After nearly thirty years of sales in the country, the repertoire of clients has grown by 42% in the last five years.
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Source San Antonio Current by Bryan Rindfuss
After stepping down as executive director of Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum in 2013, Bill FitzGibbons started channeling his interest in "creating a dialog between international artists and San Antonio artists" into "Texas!" — an exhibition that showcased 13 Texas artists at the National Academy of Art in New Delhi, India, and later sparked the formation of the Lone Star Art Alliance. Still in its nascent stages, the Alliance is now in the process of developing a project with San Antonio's sister city of Chennai.
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Publié par
Herve Perdriolle

mardi 1 septembre 2015

Source GQ by Kishore Singh
For now, this has not resulted in a local culture of art, one where contemporary artists have found an environment that nurtures creativity, as the Medicis did in Florence and Venice and the Mughals did in Delhi and Agra. But as important galleries and museums open in the Middle East, one thing is sure: The next time you want to see a Leonardo da Vinci — perhaps even the Mona Lisa — you might need to head closer home to Abu Dhabi than go all the way to snobby Paris.
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Source by Collegiate Times Emily Carrigan
An intimate crowd consisting of students, faculty, staff and community members gathered in the Perspective Gallery in Squires Student Center on Friday, Aug. 28 for the opening of Venkat Raman Singh Shyam's contemporary “Pardhan Gond” tribal art exhibit. The exhibit features 32 pieces, including “Finding My Way: A Gondwana Story,” a series of 16 small pieces that details the work Shyam did to survive in India.
The Radford University Art Museum will feature a similar exhibit from India, “Painted Songs and Stories: Contemporary Gond Art” from Sept. 3 to Oct. 25. These illustrations were most recently displayed in the National Gallery of Canada and will appear in Shyam’s 170-page, coffee-table-style autobiography scheduled to be released in February 2016 in English, French, German and Hindi.
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Source Virginia Tech
Venkat Raman Singh Shyam Contemporary Pardhan Gond Tribal Artist exhibits his work at Perspective Gallery beginning August 25 and running through October 25, 2015. Below is an example of work to be included in the exhibit as well as an excerpt from "Painted Songs & Stories: The Hybrid Flowerings of Contemporary Pardhan Gond Art," published in 2009 by INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage) written by the exhibit's curator, John H. Bowles.
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Source Artlyst by Edward Gibbs
Robin Woodhead, Chairman of Sotheby’s International, has announced the strategic appointments in the Company’s Indian business and the opening of an office in Mumbai, India. Edward Gibbs has been appointed Chairman of Sotheby’s India, Middle East and North Africa and Priyanka Mathew has been appointed Regional Director, Sotheby’s India. The move demonstrates the company’s commitment to providing a greater level of service to its clients based in the country. By opening an office in India, the company will be able to increase the scale and scope of its activities in the country and support a full calendar of events, lectures, exhibitions, and charity sales.
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Source The Times of India by Meenakshi Sinha
A rare self-portrait by Amrita Sher-Gil will lead the Sotheby's Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art sale (Oct 6) at London. The sale is part of the India Art Week in London to be held from October 2 to 7. A Sher-Gil painting had led the sales for Sotheby's Indian Art in New York on March 17 and 18 which collected $16,632,875. The Sher-Gil self-portrait alone sold for $2,920,000 - well over the $1.2/1.8 million estimate and a new record for any Indian female artist.
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Source Forbes India by Jasodhara Banerjee
South Asia: A geography that has experienced seven wars, and severe internal and external insurgencies in the 70 years since the end of colonial rule; that is home to two of the eight nuclear powers in the world; that has long-standing, bitter border disputes and unresolved issues of political identities. South Asia: A geography that is home to more than a quarter of the world’s population; that has the world’s most diverse set of languages, dialects and religions, and yet has a history as intertwined as its mythologies, food, music and cinema. You cannot possibly look at one set of data, and not look at the other.
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This newsletter posted by Hervé Perdriolle in October 2007, tracks the news of the Indian Contemporary Art through an international press review regularly updated.Since 2008 more than 1.800 press articles listed - 145.000 pages viewed.